My neglected JC bank alt rogue in half-blues, half 200 epics, and a couple pieces of badge t9... for some reason she went to Wintergrasp. No resilience, no trinket, no PvP gear at all, and as previously stated, not even particularly good PvE gear. If anyone looked at her, she died.

But if by chance no one looked at her... well then she did a lot of very mean stuff. It turns out my sub rogue is pretty capable at being a sneaking, backstabbing, stunning (and not just looks!) annoyance. I even almost beat a warrior. Might have done it if I'd not forgotten that I have evasion.

Yea yea, anyone can do a lot when they blow every cooldown. I get that. But what else is to be expected when my other characters could nearly two-shot me? Actually I wonder... trinket, wings, some sort of damage buff... I wonder if I could instantly kill my rogue with divine storm. Maybe not. But fine, two attacks. If she could survive more than two hits, if she had the slightest health buffer, that would make a huge difference.

Her keybindings need work, being mostly set up for carebearing. Shadow dance would be much more effective if I didn't keep hitting my pickpocket macro.

Step two: I need some gearThis is the part that worries me. I don't even have enough honor for a PvP trinket, let alone armor. I could buy gear with badges, but we all know how DPS queue times are. BGs are also possible, and arenas, but the repetitive loss which will come from my gear state is a turn-off. My paladin couldn't even do this, and she's starting at a much better point.

Then again, my gear is so bad that PvP gear is dual-use, PvP and PvE, so I effectively get double the gear, at half the enchant and gem cost. Even losing, the process could be more fun. On my rogue I feel like I have options and some control over the situation. Stuns and blind and vanish and all sorts of stuff that lets me dictate how the fight will go. My paladin has some control abilities, but too often it feels like I just wade into a fight and unload tons of damage and hope that makes someone die. I couldn't do that if I wasn't at least putting out tons of damage. My rogue has more flexibility, and that might be what gets me through the grind.

It's also a new experience. Before WG a few days ago, she had literally zero kills and a handful of honor from a VoA. I'm still learning how to play sub in PvE, so learning PvP too is quite new for me. I like that. Too often I feel like I've learned most of what I can, all that's left is practice (boring!) and gear (boring!). But my rogue, I know I've got 95% left to learn, and that's possibly the most fun thing in any game.

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comments:

Don't forget you can turn stone keepers shards into BOA honor at the vendor in wintergrasp. That should easily net you enough for the trinket. Triumph badges can also be turned in for gear, as can frosts. BoP gear but still helps to get you started on the PVP side of things.

Find an arena partner and lose 10 matches a week and you have around 250 arena points every Wednesday. Win the daily BG every day gives you another 25 arena points as well as the honor. It only took me a few weeks to gear up my rogue very nicely with this method, and I didn't have a PvP trinket either.